Page:Brinkley - Japan

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JAPAN

officials appointed by the Shōgun, who was now the depository of power. The Five Great Families began to curry favour with these low-born officials. They studied the provincial dialects and gestures because their own language and fashions were ridiculed by the samurai whom they met in the streets. They even copied the costumes of the rustic warriors. But it was impossible for them to hide their old selves completely. They lost their traditional customs and did not gain those of the provinces, so that, in the end, they were like men who had wandered from their way in town and country alike: they were neither samurai nor Court Nobles.

But the Court nobles had their revenge, for the luxury and debauchery which the samurai treated with such contempt at the outset, ultimately proved the ruin of the samurai themselves. Kyōtō was a kind of political barometer. When it reached its highest point of magnificence and splendour, a revolution could always be predicted. Probably its zenith of glory was in the days of Ashikaga Yoshimitsu (1368–1374). He undertook the building of temples and palaces on a scale suggesting that the resources of the nation had only one fitting purpose, the embellishment of the capital. A pagoda three hundred and sixty feet high and a "golden pavilion" (Kinkaku-ji) were among his most celebrated constructions. The former disappeared altogether in the "eleven years' war" half a century later, and of the latter only a portion remains,—a three-storyed pavilion, the ceiling of its second storey

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